My Antonia + The Age of Innocence quotes

“Women ought to be free - as free as we are” - Age of innocence

Archer, in defending Ellen who represents a new generation of freedom from class and social constraints in the 1870s, takes on a modern, liberal and revolutionary stand point. Love, desperation and kindness encourages a shift in view point in hopes of a more modern and accepting society where passions can be followed at will.

“mouth-pieces of some remote ancestral authority” - Mr + Mrs van der Luyden

These characters represent the old-standing elite and original rich settlers of New York. They upkeep the ethical class expectations and clear images in a time before moral decay and fragmentation of morals that occurred in the years after WW2.

“New York Society is a very small world…And it’s ruled, in spite of appearances, by a few people with - well, rather old-fashioned ideas” - Age of Innocence

Highlights the rigid class restraints and expectations the elite classes of New York enacted, resulting in a time when individuals put on completely ethical, respectable fronts due to individuals judgement like the van der Luydens.

“Archer had reverted to all his old inherited ideas about marriage” - Age of innocence - Age of Innocence

Highlights the difficulty for a member of the elite to violate expectations class has put on them due to the intensity of scrutiny they are subject to and the masses they risk losing for violating the normalcies of their class position. Violating norms alone is difficult.

“Under the dullness there are things so fine and sensitive and delicate” - Age of Innocense

Ellen Olenska recognises and appreciates the beauty and positivity of a pure, ethical and morally upstanding society. She views the elite and their rigid social restrictions as a means of maintaining a morally upstanding and elegant society. This is a reflection of the author from the period of moral decay, hedonism and overindulgence that arose with prohibition + the war years etc. Wharton admitted the novel was "a momentary escape in going back to my childish memories of a long-vanished America... it was growing more and more evident that the world I had grown up in and been formed by had been destroyed in 1914.".

“everybody goes to Mrs Struthers now” / “New York managed its transitions… There was always a traitor in the citadel; and after he (or generally she) had surrendered the keys, what was the use in pretending that it was impregnable” - Age of Innocence

A reflection on how indulgence, the chasing of tacky enjoyment and pleasure over taste, class divides and moral expectations began to slowly penetrate New York - by 1920 having escalated to speakeasies and intense party and consumerist culture in the city.

“If things go on at this pace… we shall see our children fighting for invitations to swindlers’ houses, and marrying Beaufort’s bastards” - Age of innocence

Highlights the transition of society from this age marked by clear ethical guidelines of the elite to a more free, liberal and admittedly more morally decayed society. Note that Archer’s son goes on to be engaged to marry Beaufort’s daughter at the end of the novel.

“Say I’m old fashioned” / “He sat for a long time on the bench” until “closed the shutters” then “Archer got up slowly and walked back alone to is hotel” - Age of Innocence

Archer’s refusal to mix with the woman he wanted to pursue an affair with highlights his clinging to tradition characteristics of society which made them morally superior to the New York of decaying morals and ideas in the post WW1 years. His son happily ascending perhaps suggests the new, more liberal and carefree generations losing a care for what the old moral traditions dictate.

“As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea” - My Antonia

Recognition of the prairie/farm land/ unmodernised and natural lands of America as the heart, soul and flesh of the country. Respect for pastoral based world before mechanisation and capitalist reinvention/transformation of country.

“This is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great” - My Antonia

Jim Burden reflecting on the joy of laying in the sun on the grounds of American countryside - reflection both on the beauty of the American prairie but also the communities of farming life where all are dependent on the land and one another.

“The new country lay open before me: there were no fences in those days, and I could choose my own way” - My Antonia

The potential and promise of America before the frontier closed. A land of potential and opportunity where anyone could go anywhere, do anything and be anyone.

“Mr Shimerida had not been rich and selfish: he had been so unhappy that he could not live any longer” - My Antonia

Highlights the reality of harsh living and the difficulty of pursing the American Dream, even in the land of opportunity. Poverty, change and the hardship of the environment, greedy elites/capitalists etc all stand in the way of an easy and fulfilled life - as highlighted by Mr Shimerida’s suicide.

“The country girls were considered a menace to the social order” - My Antonia

Those who are different/new comers have always been discriminated against and found suspicious by original settlers in America. Like the Joads, the less rich and different cultured country girls were seen as potentially dangerous invaders who could lead the country astray (however here it means morally and romantically, not leading their profits away).

“It seemed to me wonderful that she should have got on so well in the world. Certainly she had no one but herself to thank for it.” - My Antonia

About Lena Linguard, highlighting the opportunity still present in the early days of America - the promise of a meritocratic society still strong where individuals can make their own successes through hard work as the country is still forming.

“we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past” - My Antonia

Both value their lives on the prairie above all else - their time before modernisation, mechanisation and the changing of the prairie was the best. Urbanisation etc has tinted the simple times of before.